THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

As far as I’m concerned, this article by Seattle Times staff reporter
Warren Cornwall is another case of misleading - if not downright
dishonest - reporting.

1 Nov 06 — "Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping
giant," Cornwall
writes, "three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of
the
Nisqually Glacier (on Mt. Rainier in Washington state) stepping over tiny
creeks and peering down a dizzying
chute
where water from the melting
glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of
ice."

"Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky.
..."The pole is 41
feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice.
On this
recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches
of
the pole remained buried.

Read that again. "... in April the pole was buried in snow and ice,
and
now it’s not." Well, duh. I’ve heard that it’s rather
normal for snow to
melt between April and October.

Cornwall goes on to paint a gloomy picture. "Some glaciers are on
the verge
of disappearing." "While glaciers have ebbed and flowed through
the region
for millennia — the land where Seattle now stands was once beneath
more
than half a mile of ice — scientists say global warming is at least partly
to
blame this time."

I’ll bet Seattle residents are rather glad that they’re no longer
buried
beneath half a mile of ice.

Then Cornwall goes on to moan about the Nisqually Glacier, which he
says
is melting.

This is absolutely false.

I’ve visited the Nisqually Glacier twice in the past few years, and talked
to
the Park Rangers. The Rangers say that the Nisqually Glacier is growing
thicker,
and has been doing so since the late 1990s. There are also signs
posted at the viewpoints of the Nisqually Glacier saying that, yes, the
Nisqually Glacier is
indeed growing.

Growing. Not melting.

Story (with map) continues below:

The newspaper even included a link to a map which, when you take time
to
look, shows that the glacier was higher up the mountain in 1997 than it was
in 2002.

In other words, the Seattle Times' own map shows that the glacier
is
growing. And yet, their words would have you believe just the opposite.

Here's the map.

See the 1997 terminus?
See the 2002 terminus?
The Nisqually Glacier is advancing.

Hardly the kind of reporting that would make me trust the Seattle
Times.